Singletons, Time to Weep: Hugh Grant Drops out of Bridget Jones’ Baby

Well, I just don’t know what the world is coming to. Strictly Come Dancing without Bruce, Teen Wolf without Allison, and now Bridget Joneswithout Daniel. For shame!

Yes, it is true my dears, Hugh Grant has pulled out of the third sequel, Bridget Jones’ Baby, which has been in production for years. To be fair, maybe Grant just got tired of waiting.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote in early 2012 that Grant “was especially displeased with the script”; however the filming would proceed that year as planned. It was also firmly assured that Grant would indeed reprise his role.

To be honest, once an actor publicly dismisses the script, it’s a pretty fair assumption that he is not going to end up in the film. Just a thought.

It seems that although two and a half years have passed, the writers still haven’t ironed out those problems. “The book’s excellent…but the script is completely different”, Grant said in a radio interview Friday. He also said that they are supposedly going ahead without his character, despicable Daniel Cleaver. This just simply cannot be.

As much as I love Renée Zellweger’s Bridget and Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy (well, I am English and female after all), I must admit that Grant’s cad made the two Bridget Jones films for me.

Yes, obviously, Daniel is the “bad guy”; the thorn in the side of Bridget and Darcy’s storybook romance. Still, he was just too deliciously evil to resist, and Grant played him absolutely perfectly (I suspect that Daniel is probably closer to the actual Grant than any of his other characters).

Although both Zellweger and Firth are definitely attached to Baby, which will again be produced by the wonderful Working Title, it seems that the start of shooting is still a long way off.

“The way it’s going, you might be seeing Bridget Jones’ granddaughter’s story being told by the time we get there” joked Firth last year. Oh Colin, how I adore you. Just not as much as Hugh Grant. Sorry.